A sad sight

All is far from well at Christchurch Cathedral - Stuff reports:

The "twisted and shattered" Christ Church Cathedral is more damaged than first thought and the timing of its rebuild uncertain.

The February 22 earthquake cracked pillars, twisted walls, shattered stained glass, collapsed buttresses, fractured masonry and toppled the tower.

The Rose Window on the west wall, the tower, the north wall and the south wall will have to be dismantled and rebuilt, engineering reports say.

Security footage has also emerged showing people were on the balcony at the top of the tower just three minutes before the quake struck.

Cathedral administration manager Chris Oldham said the true extent of the damage became clear only after staff returned to the site.

"The pillars inside have cracked and the whole building is actually in quite a sad way," he said.

"The building is twisted. It has moved. The buttresses have stones coming out of them. If you look at the wall on the south side, you can see how the top half of it has moved one way and the bottom half of it has moved the other way.

"The stained-glass windows are all twisted and shattered on that side.

"When you go inside, the Oamaru stone blocks have come away from the wall and are loose and at unusual angles."

The west porch has moved away from the west wall by about three centimetres. The top of the transept walls are offset by about 4cm and the north buttress of the west wall has collapsed.

The Rose Window has been shored up with a steel gantry.

This is indeed sad news. We first visited the cathedral 30 years ago on our first-ever trip to Christchurch. Family down there have attended services, funerals, recitals and concerts there. As recently as New Year, we sat in the cafe hidden by the pile of rubble to the left of the photograph above enjoying a coffee, chatting and people-watching.

We hope that the cathedral can be rebuilt, but it will be a long, tortuous and expensive process. We reckon though that some buildings are worth saving, and given that so many of the churches of Christchurch, some of which were historic buildings in their own right, have been suffered irrepairable damage, the cathedral and its Catholic counterpart deserve special treatment. Like the Arts Centre, which we heard yesterday could take up to 15 years to fully rebuild they are buildings of significance to the people of Christchurch, be they religious or not.